New Type Of Heart Stent At Baptist Hospital Desoto

Anyone who’s been through surgery, just wants to get it done with and move on to a healthier life.

Margaret Graham, a Southaven resident, is counting her blessings. She said the doctor told her that she would not have been alive by Christmas day if she had waited.

She says chronic pain pushed her to see a doctor, “My legs were swelling really bad at the bottom and they were turning real red and I couldn’t hardly walk at all and they were hurting”.

Graham had a blocked artery in her heart.
The one they call a “widow maker”. However, the doctors at Baptist Hospital Desoto gave her more time with her husband with a heart stent. It’s the first of its kind in the Mid-South and only offered at Baptist Desoto.

“It’s very exciting to us. It’s kind of like the Holy Grail of stents,” said Dr. Gilbert Zoghbi, a cardiologist with Stern Cardiovascular.

A heart stent opens-up arteries so blood can flow. In the past, they’ve been made of metal. Now Baptist Desoto is using the latest in medical innovation by providing heart stents that will dissolve over time.

“With time, the stent dissolves and disappears. So in three years, there is nothing left behind”, says Zoghbi.

He says this new technology makes future procedures on the patient easier and allows the artery to behave more naturally while it fills the heart with blood. Even though the stent dissolves, the artery remains open.

Graham says the day after her surgery, she felt so much better and her legs weren’t swelling anymore.

Graham says it is allowing her to now walk, pain1free, by her husband’s side, “It was just such a relief and it still is”.